


i wanna be with you till the sun rises

by Ymae



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Near Death Experiences (Mentioned), Soft Girlfriends, Worried Girlfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 11:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymae/pseuds/Ymae
Summary: Post 5x04, Kelly and Alex, for one, just need some sleep. And cuddles. And possibly also to work through some mind-control, near-death experience related issues.





	i wanna be with you till the sun rises

**Author's Note:**

> Title and song references are from 'Lights Out' by Ayelle and Sonn, which was on repeat while writing, just if you'd like something to set the mood :)

It’s… a lot.

It’s a  _lot, _ and Kelly’s head is still spinning like crazy. There’s a string of confusion at the edge of her vision, and spots that suck her in like black holes whenever she closes her eyes. 

Being back in that house, that town, all of it layered with dust and rust and shiny rotten things. And now her brother is moving back there, all wrapped up in a great speech and an old-yet-new life motto, and it’s all so… it was all so foreseeable. And all the way, Kelly just wishes it wasn’t.

She finally returns from the military, ready to share her life with her brother. To get a job in his building, move to his city, befriend his friends. Even her  _girlfriend _ is the  _sister _ of a girl he’d once dated,  _dammit. _

(Though that’d been a happy accident.)

(Such a happy fucking accident, Kelly thinks, tears stinging in her eyes.)

And then James gets himself fired out of the building, moves away from the city, leaves his friends behind. Leaves  _her_ behind. 

She’s happy for him. He’s been searching for something to direct his energy at  for as long as she remembers, and though being head of a media empire suited him, this might just satisfy his endless need for  _connection. _

Kelly knows him well. It’s practically unavoidable, growing up together. She sees a lot of their dynamic reflected in Alex and Kara,  only that while the Danvers sisters seem to grow closer by the day—Kelly wouldn’t be surprised if they’d learned to read each other’s thoughts—she and James drift farther apart the more she’s trying to reach him. 

It’d be easier if her brother was an asshole, but he’s a goddamn angel and she loves him so much.

And yet—maybe the distance will do them good. (Or so she tries to tell herself.)

(It  _is _ a little creepy that her brother’s known her girlfriend for longer than she has. She’d never have met Alex if not for him, but it’s still unnerving. It’s not even that Alex and he are such good friends, it’s just there’s  _history, _ Kelly can see it in his eyes. Maybe it’s just both of them loving Alex’s adorable goofball of a sister.) (Maybe it’s more. Maybe they’ve seen each other almost die before. Maybe it’s saving the world together.) (Maybe Kelly’s a little jealous.) (Maybe she likes Alex a little too much for the short time she’s had her. Maybe she wants  _history, _ too, every time she touches her hand.) 

(Maybe she wants to keep her.) (Maybe she’s fucking terrified she won’t get to.)

(Maybe she  _wishes_ she’d just worry about it not working out.) (Maybe she  _wishes _ she didn’t see Supergirl slam Alex-not-Alex against a car. Wishes she didn’t see Alex, barely conscious, in a closet in her apartment. Wishes she didn’t see the  _bomb _ strapped to her.) 

(Wishes she could stop hyperventilating in Alex’s bathroom, clutching the sink with shaky fingers, trying to regulate her breaths, trying to avoid the mirror. Avoid thinking  _is this my face? Are my eyes glowing green? What is a person, really?) _ ( _Maybe just the touch of a hand_.) (Kelly smiles.) 

(She walks out of the bathroom.)

“Hey, you okay?”

Alex is sitting on the edge of the couch, facing the bathroom door. The apartment is dark, only the moon sending shivers of light over the walls.

It reflects in Alex’s glass, half-full with a brown-golden liquid, and Kelly knows her well enough to realize  _that’s _ not good. 

She feels for the light switch beside the door, and as the bathroom lamps turn off, they’re suddenly surrounded by deep darkness. The only sounds in the room are the low hum of the fridge, Alex’s foot tapping on the floor in a rhythm that makes no sense, and the evenness of Kelly’s own breathing.

It’s a weird mood. It reminds her of the parking garage, of Alex’s mouth saying words that her eyes betray. Of them saying goodbye like saying  _see you tomorrow, _ and Alex hugging her like  _please don’t die on me. _

Kelly had, most recently, been possessed by a Martian, thrown through glass, had her girlfriend point a gun at her, fall off a building, and stepped through a portal constructed by a  _watch, _ and she’d have to deal with that. She shouldn’t be postponing it, but she’d get to it eventually, and she’s worried Alex’s form of  _dealing with things _ is  _take ‘em to my grave and put it six feet under. _

“Kelly?”

Alex’s eyes soften up.

She hesitates only a tiny second before setting her glass on the couch table and standing up. Kelly notices she’s still in the same clothes she’d had on all day, had on when she’d almost blown up. It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

Alex stops, still an arm’s length away.

“Kelly,” she repeats, very slowly. Softly.

“Alex.”

“I think you zoned out there for a sec,” Alex tells her, her hands awkwardly out of her pockets, reaching for Kelly and pausing. “You know, it’s okay if you want to go home right now. Just sleep, or be with your brother. I totally get if a sibling’s the first thing you’re looking for right now. He did just announce some pretty big news.” Alex laughs, shaking her head at herself. “Well, obviously he told you before, I mean, you’re his sister… it’s just, I don’t want to be crossing any boundaries, and I don’t think I’m very good company right now.”

“Today has been a lot to take in,” Kelly admits, raking a hand through her hair.

“Yeah. You must be really overwhelmed.”

There are knots in the air between them she’s pretty sure she didn’t put there, waves of  _something _ rolling off Alex that’s hardening right now, forming bricks Kelly doesn’t know where to put. 

Alex’s hands twitch, and Kelly reaches out and turns on the small lamp by the couch. Immediately, their little corner of the room floods with warm light, illuminating Alex’s face from the side, her forehead scrunched up and her eyes so glassy they look see-through.

“I am, but I’d love to be overwhelmed with you.”

“James—”

“Probably on his way to Calvintown already.”

“How are you, then, really?” Alex takes her by surprise, finally reaching out and taking Kelly’s hands, drawing her to the couch, pillows and blankets already outnumbering them by far. Kelly collapses onto it, trying to relax every muscle into the soft cushions, matching her breathing to the patterns Alex draws onto her palms.

“Tired. Head hurts.” _Malefic doesn’t _feel _gone. _“Sleepy.” Tired. Very tired. Alex has taken on to massaging her scalp now, and the gesture, her deft fingers taking on a soothing rhythm, is filled with so much of _something _Kelly feels like bursting at the seams. “Afraid.” 

“Is this okay?” Alex whispers. Kelly nods silently against Alex’s chin. “Shh. There’s nothing to be afraid of now. Just sleep.” Kelly wants to protest, to explain the images on the insides of her eyelids, but as she opens her mouth, she realizes they’re gone. Replaced by darkness pulsating in sync with Alex’s hand brushing through her hair. “Nothing here can hurt you. Not even me.” The phrasing’s a little off, Kelly notices, just as she’s drifting away, Alex’s voice growing quieter as she repeats, “not even me,” but it’s soon drowned out by something of a low hum, a melody, and before Kelly can think about it, she’s asleep. 

* * *

“Breakfast.”

Kelly wakes up to a soft nudge on her shoulder, a kiss on her forehead, fleeting, it’s gone. She’s lying under a heavy blanket. She’s comfortable. The sun is barely up outside, the apartment dim, a soft song coming from Alex’s bluetooth speaker in the middle of the room. It smells like food.

Kelly stays in bed for a few minutes longer, just trying to preserve the moment, until Alex’s worried face comes into her sight.

“So, I swear I have an explanation.” Alex’s eyes shift subtly to the clock on the bedside table, _5:20 _blinking in red numbers. “But when you fell asleep yesterday, it was only six pm, and I didn’t think it’d feel great to sleep more than twelve hours.” 

Kelly nods. Her eyes are heavy with sleep, so she closes them again, stretching her arms over her head on the comfortable mattress.

She sits up with a start.

“Alex? Uh, this might sound strange, but didn’t I fall asleep on the couch yesterday? Or am I remembering wrong?” If she’s losing time, now—

The mattress dips as Alex sits down next to her, slings an arm around her. Kelly leans into the touch.

“I should’ve led with that,” Alex mumbles, and Kelly wishes, just for one goddamn moment, that this could be easier, that they could pretend to be okay for two consecutive nights. It’s awkward enough navigating a new relationship without new _trauma_ stacking up sky high. “You _did _fall asleep on the couch.” 

Kelly chuckles. “You carried me?”

A smile tugs at the corners of Alex’s lips.

“Alone? Without waking me up?”

“You can thank me now, seeing as your back’s not permanently damaged. Up for breakfast?”

Kelly draws back from Alex’s warmth a little, studying her face. “Why do you feel like you have to do… this?”

“Aw, if you think I do nice things for you out of duty, I’ve been a horrible girlfriend.”

The tiny speaker on the table keeps on with its music. Kelly looks at Alex, and Alex looks away.

_I wanna be with you till the sun rises _

_in your eyes, in your eyes, in your eyes _

* * *

Big blue cups are filled with scalding hot tea, sweetened with honey. Alex clutches her mug tightly, but when Kelly reaches out for hers, she almost burns her fingers.

There’s a quiet kind of comfort in the early morning hours. Kelly scoops up pancakes with whipped cream and chooses from an elaborately done fruit platter. She notices that Alex isn’t eating, but refrains from comment and instead just moves closer to her, almost completely leaning into her embrace while balancing tiny pieces of apple and grapes. She swears she can feel Alex nodding off, her arms around Kelly sagging just a tiny bit.

So she hasn’t had any sleep.

Kelly sits up a little, looking around the apartment. There’s no sign of what Alex could have been doing in the eleven hours she was asleep; no laptop, no case files, no blankets draped on a chair. The bed’s only ruffled where Kelly’s been sleeping, and the couch is empty even of the mountain of pillows that’d been covering it yesterday. Alex’s shoes are still beside the door where she’d left them. She’s in  yesterday’s clothes. The shadows under her eyes look like bruises, blue veins shimmering through. 

Dishes are stacked up on the counter, a few fruit flies buzzing lazily over the plates covered in tomato sauce.

It shouldn’t be a surprise.

The apartment looks exactly the way they’d left it before Kelly had been driven out of town. The same dishes, same takeout boxes next to the sink. Alex’s private phone is still lying on the couch table, dead.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but Kelly’s pretty sure Alex had been at work for two days straight, eating god knows what, sleeping god knows where.

“Done with breakfast?”

Kelly startles, choking on her grape, and Alex looks at her strangely.

“Babe, are you okay?” Alex sits up like her body hadn’t just knocked her out cold out of pure desperation. It’s silly, Kelly knows that, but she can’t help but grin a little at the casual term of endearment, her breath catching in her throat.

Alex’s face lights up when she sees Kelly’s reaction, and it almost distracts her from the way Alex’s hand trembles as she stacks up the dishes.

She heads into the kitchen, humming under her breath as loads out the dishwasher, and for a moment Kelly gets caught up in it, in how her girlfriend moves around the room, how her hair falls in front of her eyes, how her face transforms in the daytime shadows. How concentrated she looks as she sings quietly to the song still pouring out of the speaker, how her eyes catch Kelly’s when she looks up.

It’s easier to lose herself in the soft edges of the morning than to deal with yesterday’s brokenness. It’s easy, it’s  _so _ easy with Alex, to stay in the moment in a way she’d never been able to, before. This is so  _good, _ and it’s the calm in the storm in a way she needs it to be. In a way she’d like it to be. But Kelly shouldn’t let herself have the luxury of pretending the storm’s just going to blow over, and that’s it. 

Kelly’s whole line of work is based on,  _and that wasn’t just it, _ while Alex’s job is to fight the storm with everything she’s got. 

“That reminds me,” Kelly mumbles. “I don’t mean to destroy the mood, but isn’t today a workday?”

Alex wipes her hand on a towel and leans against the counter. “I thought you took the week off.”

“I did. I mean work for _you._” 

Alex takes up the towel, folding it meticulously, unfold and repeat. Her eyes are cast down. “I’m not going into work today.”

Kelly frowns. “You’ve never taken a day off, ever, since I’ve known you.”

“Well, I’m doing it now.”

“You don’t want to help clean up after—”

“I’m not gonna be a fucking help! Okay?” Alex throws the towel on the counter, stalking over to the couch and burying her face into her hands. Suddenly the apartment is too dark, too glum. Kelly is perched on her chair, frozen, when she just wants to see if her girlfriend’s shoulders are shaking, if her nails are burying tiny half-crests into her palms. There’s something in her chest that _snapped_ when she was hit with green eyes set in Alex’s face, with feeling Malefic’s triumph as he considered making Alex jump off a building and having J’onn watch. 

Getting a glimpse of the white-hot pain shooting through Alex’s head.

Alex is so good at this. Kelly  _knows, _ she just  _knows _ she’s probably tricked myriads of DEO issued therapists into thinking she was okay, for years and years, but she’s so fucking terrified that if Alex tries fate for too long, it will shatter her. 

Her radiant smile a distraction from the tremble of her hands until she’d gotten that, too, under control.

And now she’s right in front of Kelly, and Kelly can’t even see if she’s shaking. If she’s crying. She’s fucking frozen, and her girlfriend might be crying on the couch.

No, she won’t be. This is not what will take Alex apart. Any minute now, she will—

“God, Kelly.” Alex raises her head, her eyes entirely dry. “I am _so _sorry for snapping at you. You didn’t do anything wrong, I promise.” Her eyes are open wide, her knees up to her chest. She looks so small. “If you want to go home now, I understand. I’m sorry I woke you up so early on a day off—” 

_No. _ Kelly decides, right there, that this won’t be it. She stands up from her chair, brushes crumbs off her comfy pants, still sleep-tousled, and steps over the backrest of the couch, slumping down right next to Alex. It elicits a tiny smile from Alex’s lips, which, really, is always a win. 

“_You_ didn’t do anything wrong, _babe,_” Kelly clarifies, a warm feeling bubbling in her chest when Alex blushes a little at the nickname. Then, Kelly’s face grows serious—although it must look just a tiny bit ridiculous, seeing as she’s in a pajama shirt with a fluffy gray dragon on the front—and she instinctively reaches out, clasping Alex’s fingers in a way that makes her wonder who of them is anchoring whom. 

“Seeing you strapped to that bomb yesterday,” Kelly hesitates, then goes on, her voice barely above a whisper. It’s not that she’s bad at expressing feelings; it’s that this feels _important, _this is life-or-death and they’ve gotten away with life, but Alex had been close enough that Kelly could see death reaching out to her with black holes for fingers. “It terrified me. You terrified me,” Kelly confesses. 

Alex’s eyes turn dark and dangerous for the fraction of a second, and then she presses a kiss to the side of Kelly’s head, her eyes closed, swaying to the song that’s still playing on repeat, almost too quiet to be heard.

_I wanna paint the moon with your eyelashes _

_paint the night, paint the night, paint the night _

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispers into her hair. Kelly can feel tears sting at her eyes at how soft this all is, and her dead fiancée flashes in her mind for a second before the image goes back to Alex, red digits counting down her life. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s just...”

_lights out_

“_You _didn’t seem terrified. In fact, you didn’t even seem worried. Or fazed at all. You just… _stood there, _a bomb on you that was fine-tuned on blowing _you _up, and I couldn’t see _anything _in your face.” 

Alex’s fingers are threading through her hair, and Kelly  _hates _ how dependent she already feels on this, Alex’s touch grounding and soothing but coming from a person who seems to care so  _little _ about staying alive. 

“I’ve been trained for this kind of thing,” Alex whispers, her voice still far too even for how Kelly feels a string of hot tears on her cheek. Kelly’s aware Alex has probably had this conversation before, can see it in the exasperation lining her loved one’s eyes, and suddenly she doesn’t understand why it was _her _they’d been worried about. Why Alex isn’t with Kara or J’onn or even Supergirl right now, someone who knows what she’s already been through, what this means in the grand scheme of things. 

It seems having a death device strapped to her doesn’t count for very much comparably, although Kelly refuses to believe that.

“Like what? What could be worse than almost dying?”

Alex shifts a little. “Well, obviously that’s not great, but some near-death experiences are worse than others,” she states, like it should be obvious, and oh, Kelly already regrets asking. “I think Rick Malverne is probably in the top three.”

“Okay,” Kelly says slowly, bracing herself, “so who’s Rick Malverne?”

“Okay, so he was this guy Kara and I went to middle school with,” Alex begins, and Kelly settles against her touch, closes her eyes. “And had this horrible mother, and his father went to prison for murder. And he grew up and found out—uh. Oh.” Alex hesitates. “Uh, he found out I worked with Supergirl, and so he kidnapped me. It was totally stupid. I didn’t recognize him in the elevator and he knocked me out cold.”

“What elevator?” Kelly asks, just to keep herself from screaming on behalf of Alex, on behalf of the calmness in her voice. _So he kidnapped me. _

_It was totally stupid. _

“Oh, the one right outside.”

“Of _your _apartment?” 

Alex doesn’t answer, and Kelly figures she’d nodded and forgotten Kelly couldn’t see her.

“He put me in this tank in a warehouse somewhere. Supergirl got to him, but he wouldn’t tell her my location. Gave her—I think it was forty-eight? Hours.”

“Or what?”

A second later, Kelly regrets her naivety. She should be used to this game from the stories James tells, even from military tales, she of all people could know how this goes, but she’s never heard anyone tell it quite as casually as Alex.

It scares her almost as much as the actual bomb did.

“Or he’d kill me,” Alex confirms. “He’d got that camera up in the tank, and I hijacked my tracker with it, and sent my location to Supergirl—and Maggie.” Alex’s fingers in her hair stop for a second. They haven’t established an exes-protocol yet, but Kelly hopes Alex knows her well enough not to be afraid of her jealousy.

“Wait, your tracker?”

“It’s in my left shoulder. Or at least it used to be. They put it in the right one, after, although they put the tracker system out of use. Too many hacking opportunities.”

“After?”

“I kind of—” Alex sighs. “Hey, I’m not sure this is a good idea. You’ve—we’ve been through some stuff in the last few days. Maybe it’s best we leave the old stories for when we’re… when we’re more okay.”

It’s the closest Alex has gotten to admit  _she’s _ not okay, and if it takes digging up old trauma to do that, Kelly gladly will. But she doesn’t say that. 

Instead, “I get that. But I’d like to hear this story’s ending.”

“Mhm.” Alex resumes her pattern, and Kelly relaxes. It’s addictive, really. The calm in the storm.

_Sunrise  
In your eyes_

“I cut the tracker out of me with my credit card.” Kelly suppresses a horrified yelp, but it must show because Alex presses a kiss to her hairline. _So soft. _“But the location information was manipulated, because all Ka—Supergirl found was the camera stream and a clock counting down from four hours.” 

_A countdown. _ It shouldn’t cut deep, but it does. There’s only been one countdown on Alex’s life since Kelly’s been in it, but she’s already sick of it.

“The tank started flooding. I tried a bunch of stuff to stay alive longer, but in the end, I mean—” Alex takes a shaky breath, and somehow (and this is a horrible, horrible thought) this sign of the story affecting her is worse than anything. “Oh, yeah, he wanted Supergirl to break his father out of prison. I told her not to, obviously. Supergirl’s integrity is way more important than my life.” The story is slightly disconnected—how would ‘a guy from middle school’ know how much Supergirl cares about a random government employee?—and Kelly’s certain there’s something she’s missing, but in the face of  _way more important than my life, _ she doesn’t care. 

How could James ever think she’d see Alex’s anguish pressed to her eyelids and stay behind?

The state of Calvintown horrified her, which made Kelly’s guilt all the worse when the flashes kept distracting her focus. But then it was  _Alex, _ the certainty that she’d been taken over, her free will stripped from her. She could taste Malefic in her thoughts, his astonishment, anger, and exhilaration as he’d realized the nature of J’onn’s relationship with Alex. Realized he’d practically caught his brother’s daughter. 

Kelly didn’t dare think about  _love _ yet when she thought about Alex, but she did know the way her girlfriend loved. Deeply, firmly, and forever. She’d always been a little fascinated with Kara’s sister from James’ stories, the one who’d say  _I either come back with my sister or I don’t come back at all, _ a notion James had shared with  _his _ sister. He’d told her he’d do the same. 

And Kelly had never doubted that.

Not with her brother.

And now, as sure as she is of her girlfriend’s arms around her, she knows that this is the way Alex loves, and the way she is loved.

She could  _taste _ the moment Malefic had realized it, too. The moment he’d decided he could crush J’onn simply by having Alex talk to him. 

Kelly wants to ask her what he’d made her say.

She remembers, in a flash she hadn’t yet known was real, J’onn crying. Calling out for Alex as she was walking away.

Kelly opens her mouth. “Your life isn’t… you’re worth much more than someone’s  _reputation._ ” 

“I know that,” Alex promises.

_Do you? _

“Maggie thought so, too,” Alex continues quietly. Kelly feels a brief wave of sympathy for this woman she’d never met, the helplessness and anger she must have felt. Kelly had had a taste of that and it’s still like acid in her mouth. “She broke into his dad’s prison to get him out. Supergirl flew there. She’s _Supergirl,_” there’s an unshakable fondness in Alex’s voice, “of course, she managed to sweet-talk him into giving up my location. They got there. The tank was already full up. The water was so cold.” Alex shivers, as though on instinct. “It was… I was so close. As in, _seconds_. But I was alive.” She huffs, and it sounds like a laugh, like choking on something bitter. 

“Sounds like the most stressful four hours of a lifetime.”

“No, actually, those are whenever Ka—Supergirl’s hurt. Or goes into a coma. Which she does way too often.” Alex keeps accidentally outing Supergirl, a name spilling from her lips, the familiarity of which Kelly can almost taste, but not quite. There’s a loose thread there waiting to stitch a whole series of events together. But not now. “Still. I had nightmares for months after.”

Kelly doesn’t ask if Alex got help then. She suspects she didn’t—which is a storm for another day.

“I’m glad you told me.”

“Really?”

Kelly nods.

“Do you want to cuddle? As in, face to face.”

“On the couch?”

“Bed’s fine too, if you want.”

“No, I’d love to cuddle here with you,” Kelly affirms, dipping down Alex’s face for a kiss. Her lips are soft for a split second, before Alex loses her balance and almost collapses on top of her. Kelly giggles, drawing her closer, so that they’re wedged beside each other on the narrow couch. Alex presses another kiss to her lips. __  


_I wanna stay with you_

_Can I stay with you?_

“Thank you for staying,” Alex whispers.

The sensation of her warm body pressed up against Kelly’s is almost too much to handle.

_I wanna be with you _

_Can I be with you? _

So she just nods.

The song begins anew.

_Talk about the way you wanna be_  


_You don’t ever hesitate to say how_  


_All you wanna do is to be with me_  


_Taking it all in_

* * *

It’s that weird state of awake but sleepy. The sun must have risen at some point because the apartment is flooded with light, but Kelly hadn’t noticed.

Alex stirs.

She’d been sleeping for almost an hour, hopefully aware of the fact that Kelly would be mesmerized by her beautiful fucking face. She’d pressed a little kiss to Alex’s nose, careful not to wake her—she, if anybody, needed the sleep—and then just spent a good part of the hour continuing to look at her lovingly.

Alex’s eyes are barely open when she starts speaking, “do you know why I don’t want to come into work today?”

Kelly brushes Alex’s hair from her slightly sticky forehead. “You don’t have to tell me,” she mumbles. She doesn’t want Alex to think there’ll be consequences for not sharing. It’d be great if she could convince her to get professional help, but other than that, it’s all navigating boundaries and comfort zones and kisses and sleepiness and all the stuff that means being in a relationship.

Alex nods, stretching and almost throwing Kelly off the couch. She catches herself just soon enough.

“You said you were terrified about the bomb, and if that was you, I’d be out of my fucking mind,” Alex admits. “But it’s not what’s bothering me, not… not really. I’ve been struggling a little with what it means to be… well, me, and I’m not coming to a satisfying conclusion.”

Kelly frowns.

“Like, you know how I was controlled yesterday, and Malefic transformed into me a few days before that. And I’ve also been replaced by a White Martian before, and I was under the influence of Myriad—”

“Ugh, Myriad.” Kelly makes a face. “Good that I wasn’t in National City then.”

“Yeah. I almost killed Kara.” Alex freezes, and for her benefit, Kelly tries very hard not to wonder why the Kryptonian invaders would care for _Alex _killing _Kara, _the reporter. She forces herself to drop it. 

“That sounds horrible.”

“Anyway,” Alex moves on quickly, “and we’ve never really talked about this, but for the most part of when we got to know each other, up until, our first kiss basically, I was mind-wiped.” It’s a little weird having this conversation when they’re so close, but Kelly finds it’s a form of intimacy that she likes. It also means that Alex sees her face fall. 

“No, not like that! I was still _me. _And it was all consensual. J’onn did it, for the safety of someone that I really care about. He took part of the memories I had of that person because they were too dangerous to keep. And I was still _me, _but it all kind of makes you wonder, you know? Like, where’s the line, of what’s me and what’s just part of me and what it takes to _be _me.” 

Alex tries to lock her eyes onto something that isn’t Kelly. “It sounds ridiculous like that. But yesterday, I was the literal opposite of helpful. I wanted to activate a weapon that could’ve killed J’onn. I put you in danger. I freaked out. I—” Alex’s voice is broken at the edges. Her sincerity is tangible, and it has a tight grip around Kelly’s heart. “I didn’t even  _notice _ the bomb until there was, like, a minute left. I didn’t snap out of Malefic’s grasp until J’onn put the actual tech on me. I should’ve—” 

She buries her head in the couch cushions, and Kelly wraps her arms around her tightly, her fingers tangling up in Alex’s hair. She begins to draw a pattern, slow and soothing, and Alex’s breathing slows down. Her head emerges from the cushions, but her eyes are still haunted. “I’m the director, and I have all these responsibilities that I’m failing.  _True character reveals itself in times of hardship._” She scoffs. “J’onn said that to me once. But when there’s any hardship, I just  _fail._” Sobs are breaking free from her throat, no tears, just a kind of desperate brokenness, and Kelly’s mouth just won’t produce words. All she can do is draw patterns on Alex’s back. 

“I called J’onn a _monster_,” Alex whispers. “And he didn’t even notice I wasn’t me. That’s what I mean. If J’onn—he’s practically, he’s—” 

“Your dad,” Kelly says, hoping she doesn’t scrape any wounds. (She knows nothing about Alex’s bio dad.)

Alex manages a quivering smile. “He means so much to me. And if he thinks I’d be that  _cruel _ just because he kept a secret—I was cruel to Supergirl, too, when I was mind-wiped. I just—if I can hurt  _them, _ I can hurt anyone. I could hurt  _you._ You see—” her hands are shaking. “I’m useless like this.” 

“Alex, shut up,” Kelly blurts. “You’re talking bullshit. You’re not _useless. _You just love some very powerful people. And you’re not… you’re not cruel. You’ve just got powerful enemies. You’re a great director, okay? I’m sure of that. You’re just scared.” Her voice drops down to a whisper. “I promise you, it’s a common emotion. For aliens and humans both.” 

“Okay, but ‘common’ isn’t _good enough._” Their low voices make everything sound like they’re sharing a secret. And they are. “So many people rely on me. If I let fear get to me, in any way, people _die._” 

“And I know you feel like it does. Like it affects your productivity. But it really doesn’t,” Kelly argues. “You _say _you’re afraid, but when I saw you with that bomb you acted like the complete _opposite _of scared. You acted like a leader. You kept people safe.”

“I also endangered them.”

“You were under Malefic’s control,” Kelly reminds her. “That’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I have to be better than that.”

“So when he controlled me, did that make me… irresponsible?”

“Of course not! That wasn’t your fault.”

Kelly meets her eyes, exasperated. And Alex smiles—it’s weak, and she’s tired—she looks so tired. “You’re amazing, you know that?” She whispers, her voice rough, but there’s so much sincerity in her eyes it’s impossible to look away. 

“I just really want to keep you alive.” 

“You, too,” Alex says quietly. “I like you, Kelly. I like you more and more every day, and that scares me, too. But I’m so glad you’re here. With me.” 

“Me, too.” Kelly hesitates. “And if we’re sharing… I am _furious _at James for leaving.” 

Alex shifts a little, and the sun catches her hair, seems to light it on fire.  Her eyes are smiling. “You have no idea how much I get that. You want to elaborate?” 

Kelly shakes her head. “Don’t need to think about my brother right now. I say we just cuddle now.”

“Yeah.” Alex catches Kelly’s hands and presses a kiss to her knuckles. They just lie there, entangled. Calm. For a moment. “I’d like that.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This got a littler longer than I planned, and I didn't have a lot of time to edit, but Kelly's perspective is so much fun to write. I hope you enjoyed - I'd love to know what you thought!


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